


Domesticity

by highdive



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 11:54:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10099460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highdive/pseuds/highdive
Summary: Fletcher and Neiman reflect on their relationship.





	

**Author's Note:**

> In an AU where I've convinced myself these two can live together without killing each other...

Neiman turned to Fletcher, eyes on him, his skin bathed in dusty lamplight shining dimly onto their bed. Sometimes, Neiman forgot the crazy, and frankly horrifying, circumstances that had landed him- not just him, actually, Fletcher too- here. Living together, a little over a year since Fletcher had been fired from Shaffer; that is to say, since Neiman had gotten him fired from Shaffer. The proximity between them inevitably revealed to Neiman just how fucked up Fletcher was, and how could he not have been? Fletcher’s long-cultivated authoritarianism couldn’t stop him sobbing into Neiman at 2 in the morning a few too many times. Sometimes drunkenly. Mostly drunkenly. So many biting whispers of _I’ll fucking kill you if you breathe a word of this to anyone_ , although Neiman had nobody to tell, and even if he did, words really could not describe how sadly gorgeous it was to see Fletcher unravel for him. Learning that Fletcher was a human, and a profoundly maladjusted one at that, still left Neiman reeling months later. When it was just the two of them, in the early hours of the morning, alone together, these sorts of memories smouldered in Neiman’s mind like glowing coals. Fletcher glanced at Neiman as he heard the creak of weary bedsprings, and narrowed his eyes.

“What?”

“Do you think our relationship is dysfunctional?”

Fletcher wrapped a calloused hand around Neiman’s soft, fleshy hip, and pulled him closer. “You mean emotionally? Or because you’re fucking a guy nearly three times your age?”

“I’d say those two things are closely linked.” Neiman smiled and pressed his forehead to Fletcher’s bare shoulder, his skin taut and cold, and was met with a squeeze of his hip. “I meant in the way that we’re both… kind of messed up.” He was met with silence, so took the cue to elaborate. “I need you. I mean, I love you. But you made me great, and I can’t- I can’t tell if _those_ things are related too.”

Fletcher sighed, and kissed the crown of Neiman’s head. All at once, he had the comforting and grotesque feeling that he was holding his own creation in his arms. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t know. I just think about it a lot.”

“Don’t. Dumbass.” Neiman hated Fletcher’s bluntness, as he seemed incapable of honesty without malignity, but he could bestow some wisdom upon Neiman from time to time. “I get it, you know. We’re a fucking disgusting couple. You let me make you great, and let me push you to it. Push you into the Lincoln Center. I love you for that. Amongst other things.” Fletcher grabbed Neiman’s ass, a crude gesture met with a hushed shriek at his collar, and hoped that his brief confession of love had gone unnoticed (which it definitely had not).

“You’re not too bad yourself.” Neiman snickered.

“I’m flattered.” He snaked his other arm around Neiman’s shoulder, and pressed him to him. Sometimes, he thought, Neiman looked so much like a… normal person. If you ignored his ever-bandaged hands, thousand-yard stare when any topic besides music was being discussed, and middle-aged boyfriend (mentor, inspiration, worst enemy, bane of his existence), and just focused on his smooth face and dorky smile, he was… nice. No visible emotional issues, at least. Fletcher considered the possibility of permanently tying Neiman’s hands behind his back to eliminate one of his markings of madness.

“I’ll never be able to find anyone else like you. You can’t leave me, and I can’t leave you.” Neiman’s acknowledgment of the bond that tied the two men together may as well have been a marriage proposal. Not that they could ever get married. First, the simpler of two reasons, Fletcher was incredibly reluctant to believe that he too was a _faggot-lipped cocksucker_ , or at least couldn’t stand the thought of this reality being recognised by the state. Secondly, the pair weren’t fit to appear under the roof of any respectable establishment together. Whenever they tried, usually in New York conservatories and theatres, they had to sneak off to hurriedly fuck out the tensions that had accumulated between them, between Neiman’s brittle disposition and Fletcher’s tiredness at having to sustain conversation on his behalf. “We’re the worst kind of soul mates.”

“Well,” Fletcher began, “Feel free to go crawling back to Nicola if I’m not normal enough for you.”

“Nicole.”

“Whatever.”

Neiman sighed and squeezed his eyes closed, remembering the look of hurt confusion on her face when he had dumped her. No doubt staying with her would've been more normal than this- lying awake at night in his former band conductor’s arms. Neiman concluded that if someone wasn’t abusing you to greatness, then sucking you off to make up for it, or throwing cymbals at you, then kissing you hard as an apology, or if they weren’t _Fletcher_ , it wasn’t love. It was just consolation.

“I wouldn’t want to be with her.” Neiman said.

“More like she wouldn’t want to be with you.” Fletcher replied, settling his hands at the small of Neiman’s back.

“You’re one to talk.”

“I have to be with you.” Fletcher tiredly half-joked, and upon hearing Neiman’s faux offended gasp, laughed and continued, “You said it, not me. Stop asking me so many questions, Andrew. You sound like a philosopher. Plato.” In fear of this sounding like a compliment, he added “If Plato were a fucking idiotic annoying unhinged queer.”

“So not like Plato at all, then?”

Fletcher mumbled some miscellaneous insult under his breath, so Neiman nipped at his shoulder, which was met with a barely audible grunt. Neiman relaxed, and rested his head into the crook of Fletcher's neck. “Sorry.”

Fletcher soothingly smoothed his palms across Neiman’s back, an action incongruous with his barbs. Fletcher and Neiman needed each other, gave each other purpose. Neither knew if they were madly in love with each other or if they hated each other’s guts. Or if the distinction even mattered. The two lay like that for a while, silence returning and settling over them like a blanket.


End file.
